CGA & Composite displays available

List members: Saturday is the Hazardous Waste Drop Off Day in this part of our county and I ve been gathering some old monitors together to take down to the

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, Sep 6, 2007

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List members:

Saturday is the Hazardous Waste Drop Off Day in this part of our county and
I've been gathering some old monitors together to take down to the County
Garage. During this exercise I have dramatically learned that I can,
without realizing it, squirrel away lots of stuff in the dangdest, most
forgotten places around this property! Two garages, an attic, a basement,
and an offsite storage locker yielded their stash of displays. 44 units of
various types. And that's not even addressing the PC junque found with
those displays. Geeeeez! No wonder I have no room. My wife has indeed been
justified in bugging me about it.

Anyway, almost half the monitors that came out of the nooks and crannies
still function. About a third of those are of interest to some of us; the
others are typical VGA displays and the functional ones will be given to a
local charity to distribute to agencies that can use them.

Why so many? Over the past 15-20 years or so people have given me their
various peripherals and systems thinking I could "use" them for something
as they know I'm an engineer and/or geek. A few interesting items have come
out of that, so I don't refuse. But as I think some of you know, there's a
lot of useless stuff that comes along with this activity. I simply stashed
the extra stuff in the various places around here fully intending to get
around to checking them and disposing of them. It was more like forgetting
about them from being so busy with typical work/household/family life. Now
is the time because I *have* a little time as I'm presently unemployed. And
NOW I can finally have a little space to move around!

The functional units which are of our interest on this email list are
CGA/RBG color monitors, a few CGA/monochrome displays, and composite input
monochrome monitors. I'm keeping one CGA color, one CGA mono, and one mono
composite. The CGA color is kept especially for my trusty Heath Z-100 low
profile with the UCI EasyPC and 30 meg hard drive installed. Anyone
remember the EasyPC for the Z-100? Supposedly provides 100% IBM PC
compatibility.

I brought the Z-100 home from storage, turned it on and it fired up (kinda)
right away. I had to reseat the cards in the S100 card cage to get it to
boot off the hard drive in the Z-100 and the PC modes. Woo Hoo! Last I
turned it on was a little over 16 years ago. Anyway, I used my "Z" to test
the mono and CGA monitors.

What is available? Well, . . .

5 units - CGA color, usually 13" including one Heath/Zenith ZVM-135 which
has only fair display intensity. There are two Magnavox, one Samsung, and
one I forgot which brand. The Samsung still has quite good intensity. The
others are useable.

3 units - Commodore color. Two 1702s and one 1084. I'm bringing these back
from storage tomorrow AM to try to checkout. I unearthed a C64 in the
garage out back which I may be able to check these out.

I'm offering them to this list first. You may also post this on the cc
lists which I don't subscribe to anymore. In fact, I encourage this email
to be posted to the cc lists and other relevant places.

You guys can have 'em for shipping. Take 'em for yourselves. Take 'em to
use with equipment at the MARCH museum. Take 'em for whatever, etc. Old
types of displays like these are somewhat hard to find anymore. Ones that
still function, seem to be even harder.

A problem is that I'm on the far opposite end of New York State from NYC/NJ
area.

Shipping can get expen$ive. How about if I load up my SUV with all 15 units
and we meet about half-way and whoever picks them up puts them somewhere to
distribute to the others? I'm unemployed at present and *cannot* really
afford any out of pocket costs. So, figuring approx. 350 miles or so round
trip at about 26 miles per gallon at $3.00 per gallon, that's $40.00 which
could be split amongst the guys wanting any of these. (26-27 MPG with my
Highlander Hybrid SUV)

Am I all wet in offering these to you guys like this? Or is it a practical
idea to get some bits of older gear put into classic computing hands? Let
me know if there is interest as soon as you can before Noon Saturday. If I
have to junk these, I'll need to know by Sat.